


Come Away, O Human Child

by Tejoxys



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Body Horror, Hurt/Comfort, I discovered on rereading this that Sandy has no pronouns, Kissing, Monsters, Other, Romance, Sandy to the Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 04:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10654620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tejoxys/pseuds/Tejoxys
Summary: A small child helps some monsters out.Written for tumblr's 2014 Blacksand Halloween Event, Day 2: "Under Your Bed."





	Come Away, O Human Child

Whispering. Creaking floorboards under furniture where no human can walk. Ticking inside the walls, first by the door, now up inside the ceiling above the silent clock. An answering sound by the window like a chorus of tiny bells. A small boy opens his eyes, trembling in the dark.

They are here, the fluttering, skittering, and lumbering things he’s always felt in the house at night. Many nights, he’s lain here fighting sleep, arms and legs balled up as far from the edges of the bed as he can get, shadows hovering just beyond his eyelashes, sure he’ll never see the sun again. They have never been so loud before, or so very near.

He sees at once that the nightlight has gone out. In some ways, it’s a relief; all the creeping pastel shadows are now one flat night. Except for that spot by the window, the spot where the bells have stopped. In the trickle of gray moonlight, movement. A silken, wavering, moonlight-tinted thing that may yet have a shape, if it could only pin itself down. The boy fixes his eyes on it in spite of himself. He sits up slowly, heart hammering in his throat. He’s never seen them, never ever in all these years (all nine of them). Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s smoke. Maybe the house is on fire at last, as he’s so often dreamed. But the room is cold, and he hears no flames.

The thing abruptly drops out of sight. Something sweeps across the carpet and under the bed. The boy squeaks and flings himself to the center of the bed, but the blankets are confused in the darkness, and he can’t find his way back under. He’s about to scream for help, never mind the scolding he’ll get for being too old for this, when a voice says, “Help us.”

It’s a fragile voice, a soughing, powdery moth-wing voice. It is also definitely a monster voice. Time hangs silent.

Then the boy says, “How?”

“We’re sick,” says the voice. It’s coming from right next to the bed, down on the floor. “Everyone in our land is afflicted, and our king worst of all. We have found the cure, but we can’t get it for ourselves.”

The boy has to whisper so he doesn’t scream instead. _Grandmother, what big eyes you have,_ says the fairy tale. “What’s the cure?”

“We need light.” And the voice repeats, “Help us.”

“How? I’m just a kid.”

“Come with us, and bring the light.”

“This is a trick. You’re just trying to trick me into getting out of bed so you can catch me, and… and I’ll never come back.”

The monster doesn’t say anything. The boy imagines thousands of moth-voices crying somewhere, feels the thud of his fragile little heart. _Grandmother, what big teeth you have._ He takes a deep breath and says, “Would a flashlight work?”

*

In the half-trance of adrenaline, the boy rushes through the darkened house as whispering-swift as the thing by the window. All around him, they flutter and lurch, creak and tick and chime their bells, and tonight he is on their side. Their music propels him to the cold garage, to the cupboard he hates opening because it’s always full of centipedes, and their music draws him back, flashlight in hand. Under the bed’s rafters hanging low, a black mouth yawns. Many tendrils like seaweed wrap around the boy’s ankles, as he always feared they would, and he follows them down.

*

They are speaking in the boy’s ears, urging speed. Beams of light slice into a claustrophobic forest, bouncing as he runs. And now, he sees them.

The citizens are no two alike, their appearance too slippery to fix in waking memory, and they are everywhere. Those who can move are already swarming toward the light. The rest are piled in battlefield-heaps among the trees, perhaps for companionship, perhaps because there was no better place to put them.

They are shining eyes and teeth and mandibles, glistening segmented limbs, bristling hairs in razor-straight rows, heavy midnight-blue scales contoured like fleur-de-lis that toll against each other like broken windchimes. They are creeping slime, skinless flesh with bubbling veins, dark elastic wings, fur and oil and blood. All are here, all of them who ever smiled in the dark while a child curled deeper under the covers and prayed for dawn. Many do not move until the light falls upon them, hissing like peroxide in a cut. Some make noises in their agony that roll stinging through the boy’s bones. But then they rise. They gather. Hope vibrates in the ground, and the boy keeps running.

He shines the light on everyone he can find, until an ornate door looms before him. It doesn’t have a handle. The boy stops, and all at once feels how tired he is. He sways on his feet. The heavy flashlight is beginning to flicker.

A sandpapery voice says, “The king is on the other side, too weak to move. Dawn comes soon.”

The boy wipes the cold sweat off his face. “Then let me in, quick. There’s still some battery left.”

“We tricked you,” says the first voice, the moth-wing voice. It sounds apologetic. “We did not have permission to bring you here. The king will be terribly angry.”

“What? But… but I’m here to save him. I want to save him.”

“The king is very proud. We are sorry.”

“We will open the door a crack, so you can shine the light through it. The moment he wakes, we will run with you to the surface. We must not let him catch you.”

The boy’s eyes begin to fill. “Will you be okay?”

Instead of answering, the shadows crack the door with a boom like thunder. The beam of light leaps into the chamber.

What follows is a blur. Something stirs, something roars, and all the world is running and screaming. The boy runs, the monsters run, darts of dying light lost in the forest—the boy drops the dead flashlight to run faster—and it’s not a forest anymore, not a forest with trees. The branches are all webs, the ground is soft in a way that tries to drag him under. The monsters lift him up, their touch against his bare feet ticklish and strangely gritty, and bundle him up through the tunnel, out from under the bed and up onto the mattress. Covers are pulled over him from all directions, their movements every bit as frantic as all the times he hid from them this way. The darkness is warm and stifling. The boy curls into a ball and lets them tuck him in, safe. He thinks he’s only closed his eyes for a second.

He opens them to bright sunlight and birdsong.

*

Down in a cavern where water echoes, the Nightmare King wakes slowly. He has a shape again. The shape remembers breathing, circulation, and the right number of limbs. The stone is cold beneath the side he’s lying on, but his head is pillowed on a warm lap. Tiny, hot fingers comb his hair; the other hand rests possessively on the crest of his brow, right between his eyes.

Dreamsand rolls off Pitch’s body and hisses along the floor, retreating like a tide. There is anger in its bells. Pitch angles his head enough to see the look on Sandy’s face. Very angry.

“Sandy?”

- _You came far too close, this time._ -

Pitch drops his eyes. He stretches out an arm to admire its solidity. The last time he had a hand, he could see light through it. “What time is it?”

- _Two days before Halloween,_ \- says Sandy tersely. - _Which is why I didn’t think I had to worry about you. But you never ask for help, do you?_ -

“And I never say thank you, and I never apologize,” Pitch agrees. Sandy’s hand traces down to his neck, and Pitch lifts his chin like a cat to give more access. He really hadn’t expected to come back this time; the terrible weakness had ridden him so hard, and so late into the year. Now, with both of Sandy’s hands stirring premonitions of great damage if they were to squeeze instead of caress—and they won’t, oh, they won’t—Pitch is grateful to be back. He closes his eyes and listens for what he knows is there.

Higher in the cavern, a spark on a sparse iron globe echoes its twin somewhere in the human world, where a child crouches halfway under his bed in the morning light, touching the spot on the floorboards where a tunnel closed inside a dream. Though very young, the boy already suspects he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to get back there.

“It was real,” the boy tells himself. “It wasn’t just a dream. It was real.” He wants to check the cupboard for the flashlight, but even if it's no longer there, the centipedes will be. Fear glows in his heart, the same color as wonder, hope, and memory. All are entwined. 

“So you’ve warped a child for me. Again,” Pitch says. He catches one of Sandy’s hands in his own. “I don’t suppose you’ll want to move in with me once our old friend strips your station?”

Sandy raises their hands together to kiss Pitch’s knuckle. - _As he never did after all the others? You’re still part of the balance, Pitch. Now, let’s get out of here so we can fix you up properly._ -

Sandy moves to help Pitch sit up, but Pitch rolls onto his elbows instead and tilts his face up to meet Sandy’s. The tips of their noses bump. Sandy doesn’t make Pitch ask with words, just kisses long and deeply.

Pitch’s voice is raspy by the time they part. “And another thing. Are you going to tell me how you managed to create a bad dream? Picked up a few things while you were dead, that one time?”

Sandy gives him a deeply unamused look. - _You craft nightmares in your sleep. All I did was link your dreams and bury you in sand. You’d better get a handle on that if you come to stay with me._ -

They share a second kiss, and dreamsand lifts Pitch to his feet. - _Don’t hide yourself away like that again. Not without me there, too._ -

Pitch smiles. “Oh, can we, please?”

Sandy’s grin resembles a jack-o-lantern, and it makes Pitch feel warm as though he’s swallowed a lit candle. - _Well, nothing too remote while you catch up on work, but I could go for a spot of haunting…_ -


End file.
